NIGHT CRUISING (4 page)

A boy not yet out of
his teens recognized Molly. "Yeah, she was here," he said,
grinning to show a god-awful overbite.

"Well?"

"Well, what? I saw
her. What about it?"

Mark drew on his bank
account of patience. If need be, he'd also draw out his wallet and
offer a bribe. When his money ran out, he had a bank card good for
withdrawals all over the country. He'd get more. He had savings,
credit cards, gas cards, his retirement income from the Marines going
into direct deposit. Money wasn't the problem.

Mark said, his voice
only slightly impatient, "She's my daughter and she's run away
from home. Who was she with? What color and kind of car did she leave
in?"

The boy pulled the bill
of his Conoco cap back on his head and stared out at the pumps. They
stood in the service bay where a mechanic was changing a flat tire.
The noise from the hydraulic machines clanged in Mark's ears. He
waited. Patience running out by the millisecond. He hated slow
thinkers. Hated them when he trained them in boot camp. Haled them in
the Congress. Hated them at checkout counters in grocery stores. Lost
his patience and his temper a dozen tunes a day with them in one way
or the other. His C.O. once told him he was a Class A personality
type, ripe for a heart attack, quick to anger, volatile when
frustrated by the most mundane everyday obstacles. He kicked things
out of his way rather than bend over, pick them up, and move them.
Then he'd be angry at the dumbfuck who left the mess in his way in
the first place.

"Uh . . ."
The boy was still thinking if his wrinkled brow meant anything. "She
. . . ok . . .she was riding with a young couple . . ."

"All right."

"Yuppies in a gray
BMW. Nice car. New."

"Good." Mark
reached for his wallet, opened it slowly. The boy's eyes flicked
over, saw the money, peered out again at the pumps pretending
indifference.

"Which way did the
BMW head?"' Mark had the twenty out hovering in midair.

"Back on the on
ramp." His hand snaked out and slipped the twenty into his
pocket. His gaze was still front forward.

"West?"

"Yeah."

"Remember anything
else? Did my daughter look all right? What was she wearing?"

"She looked fine."
He shrugged, reached up, pulled the bill of the cap back down over
his eyes. He acted like a kid who didn't know what to say to a girl's
father.

The boy licked his lips
before continuing. "Her hair was tied back with a white ribbon,
I remember that. Her red hair, that's why I remember her. She had on
stone-washed jeans and a white blouse. The couple filled up and left.
That's it."

"When did you see
them?"

"About four hours
ago. I'd just come on shift."

Mark thanked him and
walked to his car. He would have paid two hundred to find out he was
on the right track.

Four hours ahead of
him. His hope soared.

His hope died during
the long desperate night when stopping along the way, he found no one
else who had seen Molly. He drove straight through, stopping at a
rest area to sleep little more than two hours before driving again.
He lost time getting off the freeway and showing Molly's picture at
little cafes and service stations between Jacksonville and
Tallahassee. No one had seen her. What did he expect, he wondered, a
trail of bread crumbs? It was going to be nearly impossible to find
her, though that impossibility wasn't something he could think about
for too long. He had to feed his hope.

At noon his stomach
cramped and he had to stop again to buy a roll of Tums. His eyes
burned from straining to see a gray BMW in every small compact car he
drove past.

His back continued to
ache and he was growing hungry.

"Molly, Molly,
Molly. .."

It was the second night
on the road when he left Mobile. When he saw the cluster of signs,
one of which was for Gene Ray's Truck Stop, he decided to stop again,
show the picture, and get something to eat.

Before entering the
cafe, he pulled Molly's picture from his khaki shirt pocket to show
it to a girl wearing shorts and a green halter top. She stood around
like she was waiting to be picked up and Mark took her for a hooker.
The signal code was the same in Hong Kong, the Philippines, or
Mobile, Alabama. A look in the eyes. A nod of the head, a sway of the
hip. A smile, tempting, and sometimes expensive.

"I'm looking for
my daughter," he began. As soon as the girl had the snapshot in
her hand, he saw how her expression changed. She recognized Molly.
"You've seen her." He was thrilled and completely surprised
to have picked up the trail again. "Look, let me give you a
twenty spot. I need help and I don't mind paying for it."

The girl looked sly as
she said, "I get more than twenty bucks, don't you worry about
it."

"I'm not trying to
buy that," he said. "I just want to know about my daughter.
She's only sixteen and. . ."

"She's old
enough."

Now his patience played
out. What right did she have telling him anything about his own
child? Old enough for what? Rolling around in the sack with truckers
at fifty a pop? Jesus Christ. He wished he could throttle someone.

"I'll take forty
since you're not interested in fun and games." The girl reached
over to where he had his wallet spread to extract two twenties with
deft fingers. She folded and put them into a black patent leather
purse hanging from a gold chain off her shoulder. She snapped the
purse shut, then shifted her weight to the other foot.

" Now tell me,"
he said. "When was she here?"

"Let's see, it's
about ten o'clock. She was here around six-thirty, seven."

His heart stepped up in
rhythm. "What did she leave in?"

"Guy picked her
up."

"And . . ?"

"He was driving a
blue Chrysler, light blue. Old. "

"How old?"

"How the shit do I
know, man? Just old. Square. Boxy. It looked like . . ."

"What?"

"An old cop car.
You know. Without the lights on top and all. The kind they used in
the seventies, you know?"

"Undercover cop
car, you mean?"

Yeah. But old, like
they used to have. Nowadays they got these fast Mustangs and shit."

"Good. Now did you
talk to her, did she say anything about where she was going?"

"Yes and no."

Mark wanted to paw the
ground like a bull. Why were people so deliberately obtuse? Once he
paid 'em, they should open like clams, but no, dopey women like this
had to give him grief. "Yes, you did talk to her, and no, she
didn't say where she was going. Do I have that correct?"

"Yes."

"What did she say
then?"

"She was going to
try her luck out back."

Mark knew exactly what
that meant. His baby. Prostituting. It squeezed his heart so hard he
thought he would die right there. He would crumple to his knees and
sink through the ground and lie in the earth until the worms came to
do their just work. .

"But I don't think
she had any luck," the girl said when she saw him pale.

Mark felt himself rise
again, from earth to sky. "Why— why do you say that?"

"She left real
quick after she went back there."

Mark expelled his
breath. "What did the guy look like?"

"Big guy, real
tall."

"Taller than me?"
Mark stood an inch over six feet.

The girl glanced at
him, then nodded. "Yeah. Bigger too. Heavier, you know? But not
fat. Shoulders like a wrestler."

"Did you see his
face? What did he look like?"

"He had long hair,
straight, past his shoulders. Brown with some gray in it. And a
beard. He was pretty fine, looked kinda like that guy played on TV,
in that wilderness

show where he had a
bear for a friend and he lived in a cabin in the woods...?"

"I never watch
television. Was he a biker?" He was thinking of the long hair
and beard. After all this wasn't the sixties anymore. Who wore long
hair except a few dingbats in rock videos? The girl hesitated, biting
her lower lip. She shook her head finally. "I don't think so. He
was too clean. Wore slacks and a nice shirt. Great smile. He smiled
at me when he came outta the cafe." She arched her back a little
and gave him one of her knowing looks.

Mark thought the
stranger who picked up his daughter must be some charmer. He'd bowled
over this girl. That might not be a good sign.

"'Which way did
they drive when they left?"

The girl pointed west.

"You're sure? You
watched them leave?"

"I said so, didn't
I?"' She sounded offended, and her lower lip went into a pout.
It wasn't a pretty sight. Not sexy or sulky as he was sure she meant
it to be.

"All right. Was
there anything else you can tell me?"

The girl shook her
head. She opened her pocketbook and took out a pack of Wrigley's
spearmint gum, offered it to him, and, when he refused, shook out a
piece to unwrap. She contentedly chewed the slice as he walked to his
car.

He was hungry. He had
wanted to get a burger and fries to go, but Molly and an old hippie
had a three-hour jump on him. At least. He'd grab something to eat
later. Later when he could afford to waste the time.

#

Cruise stopped at a
Jack in the Box. He ordered bacon cheeseburgers, onion rings, and
large Coke. He noticed Molly ate as if she had gone without food all
day. Probably had. She ate just like a kid, sloppily, mayonnaise and
tomato dripping onto napkins spread in her lap. He smiled at her,
offered to buy her something else when she finished, but she burped
quietly behind her hand, and said she was full, thanks.

Once he was on the
freeway and driving steadily, she fell asleep again, head against the
window. Cruise tooled on down the road, thinking about the pure
animal bliss of certain functions. Eating, sleeping, fucking, waking.
The perfect cycle of it. He had not indulged in the fucking part in a
long time. He wouldn't, not until the girl really wanted him to. He'd
make sure she wanted him. If she did it because she felt she owed
him, that would ruin the whole performance. He had never in his life
forced a woman. It was a matter of pride. There was no bliss in it.
It was like forcing yourself to eat on a full stomach or sleeping
when you weren't tired or waking up before you were ready.

Besides, his major joy
in life had nothing to do with the perfect cycle of life. He could go
without food, drink, sleep, and sex when he had to. The thing that
really made him tick loud as a time bomb had to do with death
dealing.

The working up to it.
The building of the pressure. The quiet approach, the jovial front he
presented, the harmless exterior that wooed his victim. And then the
moment of total abandonment when the cold rage swarmed from the top
of his head where he imagined it slept like a hibernating beast,
crept forward first into his eyes where he couldn't deflect it, and
then it was upon him, swooping down over him like the shadow of a
hawk. He always concentrated on the look in his victims' eyes when
they recognized, in their final moments, how they'd been sorely
tricked, how they had mislaid them tnust, how they had but seconds
before the razored steel began to tear and rip them from stem to
stern.

It was always so
bloody. The air itself spun with blood when he whipped out his knife
and began to dispatch a victim, His height prevented the blood from
getting on his face in most instances, but from his chest down the
red rain soaked him, He didn't know how many clothes he'd had to bury
or burn because of that. He didn't like the scent of blood when it
dried, when it was old. It never smelled right unless it was fresh.
Warm. Once it thickened into clots and strings on his clothes or
where it splashed his arms, he went into a frenzy to get it off him.

For emergencies, when
he could not find a place to wash, he carried a case of bottled water
in the trunk. Nothing felt better than to strip off the killing
clothes, step out of his shoes, and stand with the water pouring down
from his head, sluicing over his chest, flat belly, draining down his
groin and buttocks.

Thinking about his
ablutions, he could feel again the cold shock of the water, and he
shivered where he sat driving.

"Are you cold?"
Molly asked. She straightened from where she'd been leaning against
the window. She blinked sleepily. Cool late summer night air wove a
stream from the open windows through the car. It ruffled her curly
red hair from behind, lifting ends of it to trail toward the roof of
the car like the tatters of a shroud on a floating ghost.

Cruise looked at her.
He must have been unable to make his mouth work right because he knew
he'd tried to smile, but she frowned in return. That meant his facial
muscles were frozen; he'd lost control of them momentarily while
indulging in the memory of blood. He faced the road again, tried to
repress his wandering thoughts of death.

"No," he
said. "I'm not cold. The air's just fine."

"Oh."

"Are you cold? We
can roll the windows up."

"I'm okay."
She leaned her head against the partially rolled window again.
"Tired. Do you drive all night?"

"I make better
time. I don't like driving during the day. I sleep then."

"In the car or
what?"

"Sometimes.
Sometimes I get a room, pull all the curtains."

"Oh."

This time she sounded a
little worried. He wanted to reassure her that she wouldn't have to
have sex with him until she wanted to, or never if it came to that,
but he couldn't think of a way to say it without making her
suspicious, without sounding like a liar. He opted to say nothing
instead.

"Where are we?"
she asked.

"Still in
Louisiana."

"Where do you
think you'll stop?"